Strategies
When I meet students for the first time, I almost immediately encounter challenging assumptions or expectations that exist about what my class is and what it will be like to be a student in it. Unfortunately, many of these assumptions come from students’ experiences in what I refer to as “old school” art classes—the kind of art classes I participated in when I was a kid during which I was basically instructed to sit down and make something “nice.” Learning, unless it was learning about how to bend a pipe cleaner in just the right way or how to draw a perfectly round circle, really didn’t happen much. We may have looked at pictures of art once in a while, but we really weren’t expected to retain that knowledge, much less apply it to anything other than what we were doing on that one day.
My class, despite the fact that it is an art class, is a “real” class. What this means to both students and myself alike is that we do much more than simply “make pretty things.” In my class, we learn. We watch video clips, we review presentations, we look at pictures, we have meaningful discussion, we complete worksheets and other written work, we read informational text, and we take quizzes and tests. Frankly, not only do these truths about my class come as a shock to students, but also to parents and other educators. Despite five years of being an art teacher, I have yet to feel relief from the battle with this assumption of what an art class should be. So, I am very forthright with my students about the expectations in my class, but many are still surprised to see my claims actually come to fruition. Luckily, as previously stated, the students in the class for which this unit is designed should already be familiar with both my expectations and myself. It is the consistent employment of the following strategies that makes my class “real” for my students.
Simultaneous “Learning” and “Doing”
Class time is typically structured so that students learn during the first half of class and continue to work on an ongoing project that coincides with instruction for the second half of class. My reasons for organizing class time in this way are numerous. First of all, no teacher is stranger to the theories on adolescent attention spans; we all know that kids can focus on one task for only so much time before they become distracted or bored. I know that if I allotted students an hour and a half to work on a project, I would be lucky if students truly used half of that time effectively. Furthermore, I learned during my first year of teaching that students need constant reminders of what they are working on and why; it is my responsibility to provide them with daily connections between content and project.
My students promptly learn the expectation for how class time is to be used. Upon entering the room, they are handed a “do now” exercise that typically asks them brief questions reviewing a concept learned in the previous class. Following the “do now,” we learn. Perhaps we add onto concepts learned in the prior class; sometimes, we learn new concepts related to, but different from, what we learned before. We may watch video clips, see a PowerPoint presentation, read an article, view artwork, have a structured discussion, or answer questions. Regardless of what activity we do, each unit of instruction that I design and teach has instructional content that is broken up over the length it takes for students to complete a corresponding project. Students come to class every day not only with the expectation that they will create, but also that they will learn.
Collaborative Discussion and Critique
Collaborative discussion and critique are things that happen often in my classroom, whether teacher-directed or not. Students in my class are well aware of the fact that they get “plenty of time to talk” (something I gently remind them of should they decide to do the unthinkable and talk while I’m talking). While students exhibit their fair share of gossiping or talking about topics irrelevant to the art world, I can proudly admit that they also spend a considerable amount of time talking about the task at hand. My students frequently view each other as a resource for friendly criticism; questions such as “what do you think of this” or “what color should I paint this” regularly drift around my classroom. In fact, students commonly revise their own ideas or consider other ideas based on what their peers are saying. It is imperative that my students are allowed this time to discuss, collaborate, and critique each other’s works—and, luckily, it tends to happen naturally in my classroom. There are certainly times when we will have a more structured critique, but typically, this is after the projects are completed. Therefore, the discussion that happens while projects are in-progress is essential to the actual process.
Independent Research
Although this is not a strategy I admit to using often, I am excited about the idea of students being tasked with independent research in order to gain a broader knowledge of public art within the city of Wilmington. Ideally, there are many more monuments, memorials, and pieces of public art that I would like to spend class time teaching my students about; however, encouraging students to do their own research about the pieces of art I do not mention encourages some independence and reinforces both Common Core standards and college readiness skills that are so often discussed in education.
Students will be asked to choose their “top three” pieces of local public art in which they are interested in exploring (from a list that I will share with them) and will then be assigned one of their choices which they will subsequently research. Students will then compile their research into a class-directed presentation during which they will share what they have learned and how it relates to content we have already discussed in class, including topics such as subject matter, location, history of the art piece, and how it relates to the context of public art as a whole. This strategy of encouraging independent research and presentations not only gives students more ownership of their knowledge, but also allows the students to see each other as experts and learn from one another.
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